You should RTFA (yeah, I know - I'm new to Slashdot, am I?). The guy showed his work in a job interview for a company that later become Rockstar.
However, I agree with you in a sense... the game wasn't known to the general public. Besides, I thought game "concepts" or "gameplay" or whatever couldn't be patented. As many other posters said, should we expect all FPS makers being sued by John Carmack? It doesn't make any sense.
Please, take a look at our Betty's Beer Bar and tell me if it is a tetris clone, an asteroid clone or a clone of anything else, and if the graphics suck.
I don't think its a coincidence we see articles like this one just days apart of articles about the raise of the independent game developers. More and more people get tired of the retail approach, and retail has noticed - playable demos are now the norm. The whole point is letting the player try the game before they buy it.
As indies, we don't have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. The best marketing tool we have is peer to peer advertising - ie personal recomendation of a satisfied player to his friends. And the prerequisite for that is, of course, making a game players want to recommend.
In a sense, we are much closer to the "release when it's done" approach than multi-million dollar backed developers. True, we deal with higher risks, but the payoffs can be bigger, too.
In turn, this means we often have no choice but to innovate and try new ideas to attract people; the risk is higher than, say, releasing the 4th installment of a popular franchise.
It's still about the gameplay and how fun the game is. Now that 3D accelerators are ubiquitous and the wow factor isn't as important as when Wolfenstein 3D or Doom came out despite some current wow games (Doom3, Half Life 2), people are looking back at having fun with the games they play instead of frying their video card chips. It happens whenever a new technology comes out, like the CD-ROM and the countless fmv-with-two-or-three-slightly-different-paths games released.
Masterpieces, great games, fun games, don't need to use bleeding-edge technology. I'm sure I can grab an old copy of Indy and the Fate of Atlantis or Twinsen's Oddysey and have lots of fun. They look dated, but who cares?
Lost in Time. Just terrible. Bad, bad, bad, with a terrible story, technically wrong (ie a strange and ugly mix of pictures and rendered scenes made by a 3-year old boy), and with an unusable UI.
I agree with you. But let me point out something - all the RETAIL video games are flashy and awesome. We independent game developers just can't compete in special effects with, say, Doom III, so we have no choice but to concentrate in making fun and simple games, with emphasis in "fun".
As a matter of fact, we are developing a game loosely based on Tapper. It's in alpha stage right now, but you can see an early screenshot here.
Your definitions are correct, although the exact definition of what is called Shareware today is not agreed upon. Some call it trialware, but so are comercial games with playable demos.
I think the confusion comes from thinking "Shareware" as the opposite of "Commercial". The opposite of "Commercial", which is what the article is talking about, is "Independent", not "Shareware".
Shareware is a marketing strategy and nothing more. The lack of innovation usually attributed to big name publishers has nothing to do with shareware, but with being too management-set-deadlines driven. With millions of dollars to make a game, the guys who own those millions push for repeatability, thus using the same old "tested" formulas over and over.
The alternative is the growing Indie movement, with small, self-funded teams. Of course, we can't compete with AAA titles in terms of millions of polygons in each frame. But that isn't the point - more polygons and realistic looking skin shaders won't make a game fun. True, there are people whose enjoyment of the game is proportional to the heat dissipated by their processors and video cards, those who play at 1600x1200 at low frame rates to feel they're using their hardware.
But playing games is still about fun. I grown up playing games in a 48 KB, 4 MHz ZX-Spectrum with 8 colors in a very low resolution screen. I still have much more fun playing those games in an emulator than playing some current 5-CD games.
N zeros followed by AA 55. AA55 is the boot record signature, without it the BIOS will comply about not finding a valid boot sector.
N = (510 - current position). This is because AA 55 must be the last two bytes in the 512 byte sector.
Redundant... yes... don't you love when you forget the subject, submit, alt-tab out and come back 30 minutes later just to find the "cat ate your tongue" message?:)
I actually love that kind of challenge. I do program Z80s with much less than 48 KB. I wrote a Z80 emulator (http://libz80.sourceforge.net). I'll grab a PIC and start playing with it as soon as I graduate and stop having to waste my time in useless Auditing classes...
Slashdot Mirror
You should RTFA (yeah, I know - I'm new to Slashdot, am I?). The guy showed his work in a job interview for a company that later become Rockstar.
However, I agree with you in a sense... the game wasn't known to the general public. Besides, I thought game "concepts" or "gameplay" or whatever couldn't be patented. As many other posters said, should we expect all FPS makers being sued by John Carmack? It doesn't make any sense.
Inspired by, yes, of course. Clone, not at all.
Please, take a look at our Betty's Beer Bar and tell me if it is a tetris clone, an asteroid clone or a clone of anything else, and if the graphics suck.
Thanks,
--Gabriel
Not to mention X-Wing : Alliance!
The only one of those I didn't like was X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. I think it was because it had no single-player campaign.
You're right, but I do collect papers and lecture notes from several universities. A Computer Graphics course from MIT would be a great addition.
The most similar I can find is Animation Techniques, and it's not as similar as I'm looking for :(
Well, yes, line numbers in BASIC have been geting old for a long time now :)
I do. MinGW32.
I have a small domain ...don't link to it in Slashdot :)
What's the problem with collision detection in a Quake3 BSP?
I don't think its a coincidence we see articles like this one just days apart of articles about the raise of the independent game developers. More and more people get tired of the retail approach, and retail has noticed - playable demos are now the norm. The whole point is letting the player try the game before they buy it.
As indies, we don't have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. The best marketing tool we have is peer to peer advertising - ie personal recomendation of a satisfied player to his friends. And the prerequisite for that is, of course, making a game players want to recommend.
In a sense, we are much closer to the "release when it's done" approach than multi-million dollar backed developers. True, we deal with higher risks, but the payoffs can be bigger, too.
In turn, this means we often have no choice but to innovate and try new ideas to attract people; the risk is higher than, say, releasing the 4th installment of a popular franchise.
It's still about the gameplay and how fun the game is. Now that 3D accelerators are ubiquitous and the wow factor isn't as important as when Wolfenstein 3D or Doom came out despite some current wow games (Doom3, Half Life 2), people are looking back at having fun with the games they play instead of frying their video card chips. It happens whenever a new technology comes out, like the CD-ROM and the countless fmv-with-two-or-three-slightly-different-paths games released.
Masterpieces, great games, fun games, don't need to use bleeding-edge technology. I'm sure I can grab an old copy of Indy and the Fate of Atlantis or Twinsen's Oddysey and have lots of fun. They look dated, but who cares?
Lost in Time. Just terrible. Bad, bad, bad, with a terrible story, technically wrong (ie a strange and ugly mix of pictures and rendered scenes made by a 3-year old boy), and with an unusable UI.
Doesn't anyone play Diplomacy? It's much more interesting. No dice involved, no randomness at all.
I agree with you. But let me point out something - all the RETAIL video games are flashy and awesome. We independent game developers just can't compete in special effects with, say, Doom III, so we have no choice but to concentrate in making fun and simple games, with emphasis in "fun".
As a matter of fact, we are developing a game loosely based on Tapper. It's in alpha stage right now, but you can see an early screenshot here.
Will I be able to import my 40th-level Bastard Lunatic Crested Dwarf? I already have Seasick Level XXIII...
This game is brilliant... completely brilliant.
Back in my day I had to write games in BASIC, on a 4.7Mhz computer with no hard disk and 128K of RAM. And I was grateful
You should be grateful. My Spectrum was a 48K model...
I find your lack of faith disturbing...
*crushes AC's neck*
This has been starting to get out of hand for years now :)
I'm sure Pinky and the Brain are behind this!
Your definitions are correct, although the exact definition of what is called Shareware today is not agreed upon. Some call it trialware, but so are comercial games with playable demos.
I think the confusion comes from thinking "Shareware" as the opposite of "Commercial". The opposite of "Commercial", which is what the article is talking about, is "Independent", not "Shareware".
Shareware is a marketing strategy and nothing more. The lack of innovation usually attributed to big name publishers has nothing to do with shareware, but with being too management-set-deadlines driven. With millions of dollars to make a game, the guys who own those millions push for repeatability, thus using the same old "tested" formulas over and over.
The alternative is the growing Indie movement, with small, self-funded teams. Of course, we can't compete with AAA titles in terms of millions of polygons in each frame. But that isn't the point - more polygons and realistic looking skin shaders won't make a game fun. True, there are people whose enjoyment of the game is proportional to the heat dissipated by their processors and video cards, those who play at 1600x1200 at low frame rates to feel they're using their hardware.
But playing games is still about fun. I grown up playing games in a 48 KB, 4 MHz ZX-Spectrum with 8 colors in a very low resolution screen. I still have much more fun playing those games in an emulator than playing some current 5-CD games.
N zeros followed by AA 55. AA55 is the boot record signature, without it the BIOS will comply about not finding a valid boot sector. N = (510 - current position). This is because AA 55 must be the last two bytes in the 512 byte sector.
Moreover, there's a GarageGames thread about a site which will host assets of "dead" projects, with a very permissive license.
The thread is here. I'm not sure if it's in a public forum or not.
Redundant... yes... don't you love when you forget the subject, submit, alt-tab out and come back 30 minutes later just to find the "cat ate your tongue" message? :)
A documentary about XBox?
Man, I hate when someone tries to sell paid advertisement as a "documentary"...
I actually love that kind of challenge. I do program Z80s with much less than 48 KB. I wrote a Z80 emulator (http://libz80.sourceforge.net). I'll grab a PIC and start playing with it as soon as I graduate and stop having to waste my time in useless Auditing classes...